I can’t take any credit for that title because it came from my friend Frances, who laughingly gave me permission to use it. God, I wish I’d had it yesterday!

I’m going to retouch on yesterday’s topic of our never-ending inner critics because an interesting thing happened to me yesterday. In the course of writing about my internal doom-crier Phyllis, I reported on her ongoing litany of abuse. But this time, I responded to those jabs, for the first time speaking directly to that dire voice who haunts the back of my brain. And you know what? I shut her up.

Seriously. For the rest of yesterday and (so far) all of today, she’s been quiet. I think I’m on to something here. The way to get her (or him) to shut up and leave you alone is to make it clear you don’t care what they think.They’re just another voice on the wind, another blow-hard whose opinion doesn’t matter because it’s not really you doing the talking, it’s all that shit we collect through the years that serves to scuttle us. And who wants to listen to that? I mean, really. Don’t you have better things to listen to?

As a postscript, this little ditty courtesy of the supremely talented Christine Lavin:

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About Melissa Crandall

Longer ago than I care to admit--although I will--I cut my writing teeth on fanzines and media tie-in novels. Since then, I've moved on to narrative nonfiction, speculative fiction, and essays.
I write to explore and understand the world around me, the things I see and experience nearby or from a distance. If I shake myself up, cool. If I shake you up, even better. Not gratuitously--what's the point in that?--but to set what I know, or think I know, on end and realize, "Well, doesn't it look different from this side!"
My work is neither sexually explicit nor graphically violent. Let's face it - your imaginations will come up with things far worse than anything I could write, no matter how descriptive. Besides, it's just not my thing.
I live in Connecticut with my supportive husband Ed, a cat named Ruby who might just think she's a dog, and an epileptic Australian shepherd named Holly who isn't quite certain anymore who she is, except she knows she loves her mommy.